Broken
by lovesrainscent
Summary: Kabuto reminisces on his life with Orochimaru as he cleans out…the closet. Plot bunny supplied by IbikiTeishi.


**Title:** Broken

**Author: **Lovesrainscent

**Disclaimer:** I do not own these Naruto characters and stand to make no profit from posting this story.

**Pairing:** Orochimaru/Kabuto (implied)

**Rating: **T

**Summary:** Plot bunny courtesy of IbikiTeishi:

_Kabuto reminisces on his life with Orochimaru as he cleans out…the closet. _

**Broken**

The hallway was empty, rooms and chambers empty, no Sound nin left to scurry throughout tending to whatever tasks he or Orochimaru had assigned them. How very odd to think that in Sound there was no sound. Kabuto's footsteps were all that echoed throughout the cavernous building as he walked resolutely to the last room on the hall.

He paused before opening the door, adjusting his glasses on his nose, taking a breath, palm flat against the heavy, dark oak panel. One final deep breath and he pushed the door open, entering.

Orochimaru's room.

His master's chamber.

_Their_ room. On occasion. When he'd been summoned. When he'd been _allowed_...

Kabuto felt as empty as the building.

Orochimaru was gone. It was unthinkable.

He was..._dead._

The white-haired young man took another long, shuddering breath and looked around the room.

Orochimaru dead - it did not seem possible but he was, dead and gone. And Kabuto was alone.

Walking into the room, fingers trailing along the wall, he went to the desk first, touching, lifting, remembering. Papers, notes, pens. So ordinary. So _extraordinary_ because _he _had touched them.

There was nothing there and he really couldn't have told you what he was looking for anyway. But whatever it was, the desk did not hold it.

Moving on to the bookcases now, he lifted scrolls and heavy leather-bound volumes. Such a wealth of information, he couldn't, wouldn't let it go to waste. It had meant so much to his master it would be...a _sin_ to not use what he had so carefully collected over the years.

Wandering to the closet, door half ajar, just the way his master had left it when he last...

Swallowing hard and blinking, Kabuto adjusted his glasses again and opened the door wider. Robes and tunics hung on the rack, silks and heavier fabrics that had touched _his _body. Kabuto ran a hand along the row, feeling each change in texture, recognizing the faint scent of Orochimaru on the clothes.

Pushing the clothes aside, the young man peered deeper into the closet. A small box caught his eye and he reached in to retrieve it. Wooden, small brass hinges and a clasp, a very ordinary clasp it was supremely _ordinary_. Puzzled, Kabuto turned it in his hands, never having stopped to consider that his master might have _keepsakes._

With one thumb, he flicked the clasp and opened the box. Given that he'd already been surprised by finding the box in the first place, he wasn't really any _more_ surprised to discover a picture of the three young sannin with their sensei in there. Another picture showed his master with a young girl her hair so black it shone purple. Anko, he supposed it must be.

Beneath the pictures, his fingers brushed against something metallic and he pulled it out, one finger gingerly tracing the symbol on the Leaf hitae-ate. Folding the fabric, tattered with age, he gently placed it back in the box.

Where he'd moved the pictures they now covered one final object in the box. Lifting them he felt into the corner and grasped it, pulling it up to the light.

A small exhale of sound escaped his lips.

He was holding a broken pair of glasses, frame bent, one lens missing, long ago shattered and discarded.

It was the pair of glasses he'd been wearing when he'd first come to Orochimaru as a young boy. They'd been broken in a sparring match shortly afterwards with Orochimaru himself.

Something so very ordinary and yet extraordinary because _he_ had touched it. And _he_ had kept it.

Kabuto slumped back against the wall and sank to the floor, removing his glasses and wiping his own hot tears from his face.

The End


End file.
